The Battle of Anghiari

The Battle of Anghiari (or Fight for the Standard). Signed in the plate L. d'la Finse, pin. and G. Edelinck sc. (i.e. Leonardo da Vinci pinxit and Gérard Edelinck sculpsit).

A particularly fine specimen of Edelinck's famed engraving of one of the most famous lost works of art in the western tradition. In 1504 da Vinci was commissioned (in a contract signed by Machiavelli) to decorate the Hall of the Five Hundred in Florence's Palazzo di Signoria. Da Vinci's subject was the Battle of Anghiari, a foundational battle in the Tuscan hills between Florence and Milan in 1440 (despite the ferocity of battle depicted in the print, only one soldier was killed according to Machiavelli's account). Da Vinci's experimentation with a new fresco technique was unsuccessful, and he left the painting unfinished in 1506. In the mid-16th century, Vasari was tasked with enlarging and redecorating the hall, and Da Vinci's unfinished work (and another by Michelangelo) were covered over. In the early 17th century, Rubens acquired a drawing by an unknown Italian artist of da Vinci's lost work, and Rubens extended and further embellished the drawing, which survives to this day at the Louvre (La lutte pour l'étendard de la Bataille d'Anghiari, inv. 20271). It is this drawing that served as the model for Edelinck's engraving.

A superb example of this famed and rare engraving, gently and expertly restored.